Home Generator Question 3

[angelarr]

I am new to this home generator concept. After monitoring my KWH usage on my "smart meter" on my home, I see that even with spikes, I do not go above 3KWh, I stay around 1.6KWh all the time in my home. Why is everyone telling me I need a 20KWh generator??? Shouldnt I be fine with a 5KW generator at most? I cannot find any information on this, Thank you

 

[LittleInch]

angelarr - see if your smart meter can give out the instantaneous usage figures which will be much more spiky than the smoothed KWH reading. As noted here many times on a great discussion forum, the peak load can be several times higher than the steady state load. Large motors ( vacuum cleaners, saws etc) can require a lot of power to get them going.

Think of it like a car - If you've ever been able to get data on instantaneous fuel consumption you find accelerating, especially quite hard, gives fuel economy figures of < 10 MPG and lots of KW. However quite soon you stop accelerating and cruise at a steady speed. fuel economy figures leap up to say 40MPG (less KW). Depending how much stop start you're doing your overall fuel economy figures (KWH) will either be a bit less than 40 or maybe only say 25.

Hence unless you can live with accelerating at the scale 10 times less than you want to, you need a motor capable of much more power than you need for steady state cruising at low to medium speeds.

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